Cant stop hair algae...

[STLJam]

I have been battling GHA for about 2 months tank is now 8.5 months old. I have tried 3 day blackout, starting a refug, adding pin cusion urchin, adding lawnmower blenny, adding lots of snails, adding a sea hare (with did good for 24 hrs and then died). Adding pods weekly, adding phyto daily. I feed a pinch of food once a day or a small portion of frozen mysis. I discontinued reef chili about 2 months ago. I have had 0 nitrates for months.

The refug I started 3 weeks ago is growing like crazy (pictures below) and doubles in size every 5 days. Phosp has come down since starting. Refug lights and skimmer on for 12 hrs (reverse main lights). Main light is radion XR30 blue on standard ab+, but only at 40%, down from 60%, and I took white & red to 0. 5g (15%) Water changes weekly (spend about an hour cleaning up the gha).

Tank inhabitants:
Tiger goby, jester court goby, 2 clowns, peppermint shrimp, diamond goby, Halloween urchin, lawnmower blenny, 30+ snails(astraea,certis, nassarius, trochus,nerite), 3 turbos, 1 conch

Reef testing:
6/15: Nitrate 0, phosp .19
6/25: Nitrate 0, phosp .13
6/27: Nitrate 0, phosp .09
6/30: nitrates 0, 78 degrees, 1.026, alk 7.8

Please help!

 

[shcrimps]

easiest thing (imo after reading your post) would be to make a little diy algae scrubber with much higher light than what the tank gets so the hair algae accumulates into that and is taking more nutrients than the rest
siphon out as much as you can, shorter and less intense photo period and i’d try to figure out why the sea hare died
i’ve had great success with them in the past when i started tanks with purely dry rock
now i do a mix with dry for a main scape, bottled bacteria and live rock (real) live rock either from other peoples established tanks or aquacultured australian live rock and haven’t had issues with hair algae in about two-three years

 

[STLJam]

easiest thing (imo after reading your post) would be to make a little diy algae scrubber with much higher light than what the tank gets so the hair algae accumulates into that and is taking more nutrients than the rest
siphon out as much as you can, shorter and less intense photo period and i’d try to figure out why the sea hare died
i’ve had great success with them in the past when i started tanks with purely dry rock
now i do a mix with dry for a main scape, bottled bacteria and live rock (real) live rock either from other peoples established tanks or aquacultured australian live rock and haven’t had issues with hair algae in about two-three years

Rock is half live rock from TBS and half dry. Sea hare is the first inhabitant to die, it was fairly big (half baseball size). Should I up my fuge light time?

 

[Lavey29]

Typical new tank GHA stage. 0 nitrates is killing off your corals and helping GHA. Daily manual removal, diverse cleaner crew and weekly water changes. Harsh chemicals will kill your biome. 3 day lights out does nothing. New tank uglies are inevitable.

 

[STLJam]

Typical new tank GHA stage. 0 nitrates is killing off your corals and helping GHA. Daily manual removal, diverse cleaner crew and weekly water changes. Harsh chemicals will kill your biome. 3 day lights out does nothing. New tank uglies are inevitable.

How do I up nitrates without feeding GHA? Hom many snails should I target for my 40g aio? Am I missing anything on my cuc?

 

[shcrimps]

How do I up nitrates without feeding GHA? Hom many snails should I target for my 40g aio? Am I missing anything on my cuc?

for cuc what i think is the cheapest way these days is order a diverse crew from reefcleaners
they have plenty of pre made crews and you can get them based on tank size

 

[Lavey29]

How do I up nitrates without feeding GHA? Hom many snails should I target for my 40g aio? Am I missing anything on my cuc?

The GHA can outcompete corals for what little nutrients you have in the tank so your corals are starving but GHA flourishes. You need to have correct parameters to grow your biome and feed your corals. As the biome grows it will overtake the GHA which is then typically replaced by coralline if conditions are optimal. Trust me, we have all had GHA jungles in our tank at some point. Daily manual removal is essential. Get 3 tuxedo urchins and 3 big turbos. 15 trochus snails and 15 large cerith snails. I also only use scarlet leg hermits. Get parameters in proper ranges. Cut lights to 6 hours with blue and uv only no whites for 3 weeks. Raise magnesium to 1500 which helps weaken GHA.

 

[stewy14]

and I thought I was battling gha... this is next level
I just use crabs, got 3 last Sunday for my 11.3 gal cube, and all was gone in a day!

 

[Lavey29]

Also you don't want your powerhead down low in the tank. You want them 3 inches below the surface to ripple the water for gas exchange. You can point the return fitting down slightly for cross flow.